SHADI YOUSEFIAN

Universal Identity series (2006)

In her Universal Identity series, Shadi moves beyond the idea of double identity prevalent in her previous work and touches upon a much more fluid and dynamic concept about identity. The Universal Identity series, shows how contingent and contextual identities really are. For this series, Shadi took pictures of different people, of different genders, nationalities, and ages, and cut and manipulated the negatives, and reassembled them into “negative collages” which were then printed on canvas. These life-size hybrid portraits reflect the composition of one whole person with aspects and attributes of other people. The images play with our assumptions and the ways that we sometimes frame a person or an identity without considering the complex and nuanced ways that they might view themselves. These images also capture that fluidity of identity that depends on the viewer’s perspective and their ability to see beyond a single aspect of a person and their physical presentation.